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  • Published 20150203
  • ISBN: 9781922182678
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

I’M PERCHED ON the western edge of Australia, looking out on the buoyant and impressive Indian Ocean. The vista, if I turn back towards my city, continues to be dominated by cranes. A city transformed by capital and mining; a population that has grown faster than we’ve ever seen. From the time this place was a colony, population has been a struggle and particularly during the cycles of our boom times. If I put on my long-distance goggles and look north, I’d see the mining capital laid out in all of its exploration logic, and the waste left after the extraction has taken place. Laid out all over that red earth.

Growth is addictive. We keep coming back for more. We’ve cranked our controls up high. It’s good for the economy.

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The marketing is still crap

There are 3,700 people employed in publishing – a small industry, really – according to the surveys (via the Australian Publishers Association). Those interested people following current trends here and worldwide will know that mergers and acquisitions in the sector are a regular news item and, ultimately, make it harder for independent houses to maintain a presence in a boisterous market where it can be easier for bookshops to follow the dominant players and probably get some added benefits for doing so. Who knows how this market will fare a year on and how many Australian voices will be included. Right now, the unspoken reality is that advances to authors are spiralling downwards along with sales and, obviously, royalty payments. Fewer and fewer writers reach what they expected in financial and career-building stakes, even those making new books fairly and squarely in the mainstream… In the new etiquette of social media, each book apparently needs its own framework and journey, while authors, debut or veteran, are expected to muck in and do their own marketing and ‘brand building’ in the online marketplace. That’s what it looks like, anyway, to this observer. I am supposedly an insider but am perpetually perplexed by the fame stakes involved in becoming an author, as well as the claim that authors have viable careers.

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